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| Charles Sackville 2nd Duke of Dorset |
(1711-1769)
British nobleman, politician, opera impresario & cricketer.
His lover was:
Lucia Panichi.
Italian soprano.
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| John Sackville 3rd Duke of Dorset |
Son of: Lord John Philip Sackville, 2nd son of Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset 1769, British Ambassador to France (1783-1789), Steward of the Royal Household, Knight of the Garter (1787)
Husband of: Arabella Diana Cope (1767-1825), daughter of Sir Charles Cope, 2nd Baronet, mar 1790
" . . . Dorset married Arabella Cope, who brought him a dowry of 140,000 pounds. . . When Arabella Cope arrived at Knole, many of the duke's art treasures---including the Gainsborough portrait and a provocative Locatelli sculpture depicting an elegant nude, prone Baccelli---were discreetly exiled to the basement." (Dancing Lives: 13)
"John Frederick Sackville . . . was a worldly man, renowned as much for his notorious liaisons as for his extensive art collection. In 1769, when he was twenty-four, John Frederick Sackville succeeded his uncle to become the third Duke of Dorset and then took over the extensive lands at Knole. The following year, he embarked on the Grand Tour of Italy, visiting collections and buying artworks in Rome, Naples, Florence and Venice. The duke was also an avid cricket player and managed to make his little town of Sevenoaks a center for the sport. . . ." (Dancing Lives: 11)
John Sackville's physical appearance and personal character.
". . . He was unusually handsome, was well made, and had an air of continental melancholy, which more than atoned with women for his want of sense. His silence had the air of amorous absence, and he looked so ready to sigh that it served him instead of sighing; it seeming charity to afford him that pity which he was formed to repay so delightfully...." (Sackville-West, 2010, p. 131).
Several women on the go.
"But the duke generally had several women on the go at any one time. That same year he had begun a short affair, in Paris, with Lady Elizabeth Foster, the mistress of the Duke of Devonshire, with whose child she was pregnant. After a brief interlude the following year, 1786, with Mademoiselle Gervais, another dancer at the Paris Opera, the 3rd Duke, not content with Devonshire's mistress, moved on on his friend's wife, Georgiana. . . ." (Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles: 137)
" . . . The duke was a keen collector of women as he was of art, and at least one of his conquests is represented in the collection. Accompanying him for a couple of years on his tour of France and Italy, which began in 1770, was the courtesan Nancy Parsons, otherwise known as Mrs. Horton. . . Walpole . . . elaborated how 'the charms of the young duke of Dorset had made impressions [on Nancy] that seldom disturb the reason of professed courtesans. . . The duke seemed equally taken with Nancy; there was even talk of their marryin. . . . " (Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles: 130)
Royal Interests: "The 3rd Duke's chief interests seem to have been games and women... Among the arms in which he is save to have relaxed are those of Marie Antoinette, Elizabeth Countess of derby, the notorious courtesan Nancy Parsons and the dancer Giannette Bacelli, whom he installed in a tower at Knole. The plump nude plaster statue of Madame Bacelli, reclining invitingly on her stomach at the foot of the grisaille-decorated Great Staircase, is one of the most memorable sights at Knole." (Massingberd & Sykes, 1994, p. 91)
His lovers were:
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| Elizabeth Armistead |
"Next came Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead -- a well-known member of Mrs. Goodby's upmarket establishment in Marlborough Street, and later the wife of the politician Charles James Fox. . . ." (Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles: 131)
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| Elizabeth Gunning |
Duchess of Argyll.
Irish belle & society hostess
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| Elizabeth Hamilton Countess of Derby |
Countess of Derby.
Daughter of: James Hamilton, 6th Duke of Hamilton & Elizabeth Gunning, Baroness Hamilton of Hameldon.
Wife of: Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby, mar 1774.
" . . . Next came . . . Lady Elizabeth (Betty) Hamilton, both before and after her marriage to the Earl of Derby. Vita Sackville-West's mother Victoria claimed -- improbably -- that the 3rd Duke used to disguise himself as a gardener, working in the gardens of Knowsley Hall, the Derbys' country seat, by day, and climb through the windows of Lady Elizabeth's rooms at night. Elizabeth left her husband and children to go off with the duke. . . . ." (Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles: 131)
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| Elizabeth Hervey |
5) Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire.
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| Giovanna Baccelli |
6) Giovanna Baccelli (1753-?)
Lover in 1779.
Italian dancer
"Baccelli was equally known as the last and most enduring mistress of John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset (1745-99). When Baccelli's portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782, Gainsborough's portrait of the Duke (collection Lord Sackville) was withdrawn, presumably for reasons of decorum. The Duke patronised Gainsborough's great rival Joshua Reynolds, who painted Baccelli in 1783 (collection Lord Sackville). The Duke, a handsome, extravagant man with a string of famous mistresses, had set up Baccelli in a suite of rooms at Knole by October 1779. Baccelli Opéra, and were admitted to the friendship of Queen Marie-Antoinette. Horace Walpole records that when the Duke was awarded the Order of the Garter in 1788, Baccelli danced at the Opéra wearing the blue Garter ribbon around her head. As the events of the French Revolution unfolded, the pair returned to Knole, where Baccelli remained until their amicable parting in 1789. She left a son behind. She subsequently developed close friendships with Henry Herbert, 10th Earl of Pembroke, and Mr James Carey, with whom she remained until her death in 1801." (Riggs, 1996)
"By 1779, Baccelli---an effervescent woman---had been acknowledged as the mistress of the third Duke of Dorset and had moved with him to his family estate. Vita Sackville-West, in Knole and the Sackvilles . . . describes the duke as having (at least for a time) 'lost his head completely over her'; he caused a scandal in the neighborhood when he took Baccelli to a ball in Sevenoaks and decked her out in the family jewels. Baccelli's status as a well-known ballerina and, perhaps even more important, her acknowledged role as courtesan gave her public notoriety . . . " (Dancing Lives . . .: 10)
"But none of the 3rd Duke's lovers was as long-lasting as La Baccelli. Reclining voluptuously at the foot of the Great Staircase is a life-size plaster figure of a woman by John Baptist Locatelli. . . Her full name, in fact, was Giovanna Francesca Antonia Giuseppe Zanerini, but was better known by her stage name of La Baccelli (and as Jannette by the 3rd Duke himself). Born in Venice around 1753, she trained in France, where ballet masters such as Jean-George Noverre and Gaetan Vestris were transforming ballet into an art form independent of opera. La Baccelli made her English debut as the Rose in Le Ballet des Fleurs at the King's Theatre, Haymarket on 19 November 1774, and it ws here that she caught the duke's eye. By 1779 she was his mistress and living for long periods at Knole. Baccelli bore the 3rd Duke a son, also called John Frederick Sackville, who was born around 1779 and brought up at Knole, the son of a gentleman. Scenes from their domestic life are revealed in the household accounts from this period. . . ." (Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles: 131)
"Mlle Baccelli remained as a featured dancer at the Opera for the next seven years through May 1783, during which time she became the mistress of John Frederick Sackville, Duke of Dorset, and lived with him at Knole House in Kent. . . Mlle Baccelli's relationship with the Duke seems to have prevented a full-time commitment to her profession, and in some years she did not come on until mid-season or later. . . ." (Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, . . . :191)
" . . . She was born in Venice, circa 1753, to an itinerant Italian theater family. Her family name was Zanerini, and her sister, 'Argentine' Zanerini was a popular actress at the Comedie Italienne. It may be that Baccelli's mother, Antonietta Rosa Baccelli, remarried and that Geovanna (sometimes called Gianetta, or Janetta) was the daughter of the second husband. Apparently Giovanna was fluent in French and Italian and she could also speak and write in English. . . ." (Dancing Lives: 9)
Baccelli's natural offspring with the duke of Dorset.
" . . . Baccelli's son received the instructions befitting a young gentleman and later embarked on a military career, first as a lieutenant and later as a captain in the 69th Regiment of Foot. Between 1796 and 1798, the regiment was stationed in Santo Domingo, where young Sackville contracted 'a deadly fever' and died. Prior to his death, however, he had fathered a child of a pastry cook's daughter. Although Baccelli frequently sent money to support her grandson, 'she saw to it that the boy's mother should in no way benefit from her will.' Her son's association with the daughter of a common cook was clearly an embarrassment both to the Sackville family and to his mother, the ballerina." (Dancing Lives: 13-14)
7) Mademoiselle Gervais.
Lover in 1786.
7) Mademoiselle Gervais.
Lover in 1786.
French dancer
Wife of:
1. Captain Norton
2. Charles Maynard, 2nd Viscount Maynard, mar 1776.
His lover was:
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